The HyperTexts
The Best Native American Poems, Proverbs and Sayings
These are my modern English translations of some of my favorite Native American
poems and proverbs. I translated the first two poems when my father, Paul Ray Burch Jr., made
the decision to stop taking dialysis and thus end his life.
Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own brother, my own blood.
When you are disconsolate, I will wipe the tears from your eyes.
And when you are too sad to live, I will put your aching heart to rest.
Cherokee Travelers' Blessing II
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Happily may you walk
in the paths of the Rainbow.
Oh,
and may it always be beautiful before you,
beautiful behind you,
beautiful below you,
beautiful above you,
and beautiful all around you
where in Perfection beauty is finished.
Cherokee Travelers' Blessing III
loose loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
May Heaven’s warmest winds blow gently there,
where you reside,
and may the Great Spirit bless all those you love,
this side of the farthest tide.
And when you go,
whether the journey is fast or slow,
may your moccasins leave many cunning footprints in the snow.
And when you look over your shoulder, may you always find the Rainbow.
Sioux Vision Quest
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux, circa 1840-1877
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.
Native American Travelers' Blessing
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Let us walk together here
with earth's creatures great and small,
remembering, our footsteps light,
that one wise God created all.
Native American Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Help us learn the lessons you have left us
in every leaf and rock.
Cherokee Proverb
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
1.
Before you judge
a man for his sins
be sure to trudge
many moons in his moccasins.
2.
Before you judge
someone else for their sins
be sure to trudge
many moons
in their moccasins.
Earthbound
an original poem by Michael R. Burch
Tashunka Witko, better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed
hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a spirit
horse, flying through a storm, as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he
awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.
Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.
Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay—
the sheep,
the earthbound.
In October 1838 the Cherokees began to walk
the "Trail of Tears." Most of them made the thousand mile journey west to Oklahoma on
foot. An estimated 4,000 people, or a quarter of the tribe, died en route. The
soldiers "escorting" the Cherokees at bayonet point refused permission for the dead to be
buried, threatening to shoot anyone who disobeyed. So the living were forced to
carry the corpses of the dead until camp was made for the night.
When Pigs Fly
by Michael R. Burch
On the Trail of Tears,
my Cherokee brothers,
why hang your heads?
Why shame your mothers?
Laugh wildly instead!
We will soon be dead.
When we lie in our graves,
let the white-eyes take
the woodlands we loved
for the hoe and the rake.
It is better to die
than to live out a lie
in so narrow a sty.
Years after the Cherokees had been rounded up and driven down the Trail of
Tears, John G. Burnett reflected on what he and his fellow soldiers had done,
saying, "Schoolchildren of today do not know that we are living on lands that
were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point, to satisfy the white man's
greed ... Murder is murder and somebody must answer, somebody must explain the
streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country ... Somebody must explain the
four thousand silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their
exile."
In the same
year, 1830, that Stonewall Jackson consigned Native Americans to the ash-heap of
history, Georgia Governor George Gilmer said, "Treaties are expedients by which
ignorant, intractable, and savage people are induced ... to yield up what
civilized people have the right to possess."
By "civilized" he apparently meant people willing to brutally dispossess and kill women and children in
order to derive economic benefits for themselves.
After Jackson was re-elected with an overwhelming majority in 1832, he
strenuously pursued his policy of removing Native Americans, even refusing to
accept a Supreme Court ruling which invalidated Georgia's planned annexation of
Cherokee land. But in the double-dealing logic of the white supremacists, they
had to make the illegal resettlement of the Indians appear to be "legal,"
so a
small group of Cherokees were persuaded to sign the "Treaty of New Echota,"
which swapped Cherokee land for land in the Oklahoma
territory. The Cherokee ringleaders of this infamous plot were later
assassinated as traitors. (Hitler was similarly
obsessed with the "legalities" of the Nazi Holocaust; isn't it strange how mass
murderers of women and children can seek to justify their crimes?)
Epitaph for a Native American Child
by Michael R. Burch
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
Native Americans understood the "circle of life" better than their white
oppressors ...
When we sit in the Circle of the People,
we must be responsible because all Creation is related
and the suffering of one is the suffering of all
and the joy of one is the joy of all
and whatever we do affects everything in the universe.
—"Lakota Instructions for Living" by White Buffalo Calf Woman,
translated by Michael R. Burch
Mongrel Dreams (I)
by Michael R. Burch
These nights bring dreams of Cherokee shamans
whose names are bright verbs and impacted dark nouns,
whose memories are indictments of my pallid flesh . . .
and I hear, as from a great distance,
the cries tortured from their guileless lips, proclaiming
the nature of my mutation.
Mongrel Dreams (II)
|by Michael R. Burch
for Thomas Rain Crowe
I squat in my Cherokee lodge, this crude wooden hutch of dry branches and
leaf-thatch
as the embers smolder and burn,
hearing always the distant tom-toms of your rain dance.
I relax in my rustic shack on the heroned shores of Gwynedd,
slandering the English in the amulet gleam of the North Atlantic,
hearing your troubadour’s songs, remembering Dylan.
I stand in my rough woolen kilt in the tall highland heather
feeling the freezing winds through the trees leaning sideways,
hearing your bagpipes’ lament, dreaming of Burns.
I slave in my drab English hovel, tabulating rents
while dreaming of Blake and burning your poems like incense.
I abide in my pale mongrel flesh, writing in Nashville
as the thunderbolts flash and the spring rains spill,
till the quill gently bleeds and the white page fills,
dreaming of Whitman, calling you brother.
After Jackson was re-elected with an overwhelming majority in 1832, he
strenuously pursued his policy of removing Native Americans, even refusing to
accept a Supreme Court ruling which invalidated Georgia's planned annexation of
Cherokee land. But in the double-dealing logic of the white supremacists, they
had to make the illegal resettlement of the Indians appear to be "legal," so a
small group of Cherokees were persuaded to sign the "Treaty of New Echota,"
which swapped Cherokee land for land in the Oklahoma
territory. The Cherokee ringleaders of this infamous plot were later
assassinated as traitors. (Hitler was similarly
obsessed with the "legalities" of the Nazi Holocaust; isn't it strange how mass
murderers of women and children can seek to justify their crimes?)
Native Americans understood the "circle of life" better than their white
oppressors ...
When we sit in the Circle of the People,
we must be responsible because all Creation is related
and the suffering of one is the suffering of all
and the joy of one is the joy of all
and whatever we do affects everything in the universe.
—"Lakota Instructions for Living" by White Buffalo Calf Woman,
translated by Michael R. Burch
Sunset, at Laugharne
by Michael R. Burch
for Dylan Thomas
At Laugharne, in his thirty-fifth year,
he watched the starkeyed hawk career;
he felt the vested heron bless,
and larks and finches everywhere
sank with the sun, their missives west—
where faith is light; his nightjarred breast
watched passion dovetail to its rest.
*
He watched the gulls above green shires
flock shrieking, fleeing priested shores
with silver fishes stilled on spears.
He felt the pressing weight of years
in ways he never had before—
that gravity no brightness spares
from sunken hills to unseen stars.
He saw his father’s face in waves
which gently lapped Wales’ gulled green bays.
He wrote as passion swelled to rage—
the dying light, the unturned page,
the unburned soul’s devoured sage.
*
The words he gathered clung together
till night—the jetted raven’s feather—
fell, fell . . . and all was as before . . .
till silence lapped Laugharne’s dark shore
diminished, where his footsteps shone
in pools of fading light—no more.
Related Pages:
Ancient
Mayan Love Poems
The HyperTexts